Video: Cambridge rabbit hits big time on YouTube

Tuesday

Jul 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2008 at 3:42 AM

Texx Arnabi might need a publicist now. A video of the 1-year-old dwarf-lionhead rabbit opening an envelope with his teeth has generated close to a million views on YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site.

David L. Harris

Texx Arnabi might need a publicist now.

A video of the 1-year-old dwarf-lionhead rabbit opening an envelope with his teeth has generated close to a million views on YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site.

“I don’t know how that happened,” said Texx’s owner, Cambridge resident Johnna Powell, a 27-year-old graduate student at MIT, who’s just about to complete her Ph.D. in electrical engineering. “I don’t know why. It’s kind of spread all over the place.”

Powell shot the video of her bunny chewing the side of her Chase credit card bill in November 2007. It was only a few months after she bought Texx for $25 from a rabbit breeder in western Massachusetts (June 29, 2007, she distinctly remembers).

“He was the most curious one in the cage,” she said.

Texx was a curious one indeed. He had a thing for eating paper. In fact, he once ate Powell’s homework. After seeing a similar rabbit-opening-a-letter video on YouTube, Powell thought it was her turn. Plus, it would be a reward for Texx, because he was fond of eating paper. “I just decided to videotape him because it was just so funny,” she said.

Powell uploaded the video to YouTube. Nothing really happened. Over a few months, the video had been seen 10,000 times. But that was peanuts.

Then suddenly, the head of Plankton Productions, a Spanish-based company that runs bestofyoutube.com, featured the video on its Web site. As of Monday, the video has garnered over 800,000 views — and counting.

Powell, who grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., was always a big fan of bunnies. Actually, pretty much any animal. “I grew up with rabbits,” she said. “Rabbits, turtles, mice and rats. We had to have everything. The one thing we couldn’t have are cats because my dad was allergic.”

And so a bunny in Cambridge it was. She named him Texx Arnabi because she had just returned from a trip to Texas and “arnabi” means bunny in Arabic. Texx has had a few other names too: Conijito bonito (“beautiful bunny” in Spanish). Coniglio (“bunny” in Italian and Lapin (“bunny” in French). “At MIT, we’re surrounded by such a diverse population of people, I’ve become influenced by that a lot,” said Powell.

But it’s Texx Arnabi for now.

Meanwhile, Texx might be starring in another video soon, but academics might take priority for now. “Let’s say first of all, I need to get a Ph.D. thesis done. Once that’s done, I’ll start exploring new and interesting opportunities for the bunny,” she said.